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Using the Python Console

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Using the Python Console

Uploaded by

marybellesuez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1.

2 Using the Python Console


For the remainder of this chapter, we’ll use the Python console to illustrate some foundational
concepts in Python. We strongly encourage you to follow along by typing the Python code that
we present into the Python console on your own computer, to begin getting used to the rhythm of
using the console to experiment with Python.

Entering code in the Python console


To get you started, here is a brief introduction to the Python console. When we first start it, we
see the following:

>>>

The text >>> is called the console prompt: the Python console is “prompting” us to type in some
Python code to execute. If we type in a simple arithmetic expression,

>>> 4 + 5

and press Enter, we see the following output:

>>> 4 + 5
9

The interpreter took our bit of code, 4 + 5 , and calculated its value, 9 , and displayed that value
to us. Let’s formalize this idea with some terminology that we’ll use throughout the course.

Expressions, literals, and operators


A piece of Python code that produces a value is called an expression, and the act of calculating the
value of an expression is called evaluating the expression. 1
1 Evaluating an expression is something that you, a human, can also do! For example, if you see 4 + 5 and think “Oh,
that’s 9 ”, you just evaluated the expression.

The expression 4 + 5 looks simple enough, but technically it is formed from two smaller
expressions—the numbers 4 and 5 themselves. We can ask Python to evaluate each of these
expressions, though the result is not very interesting.
>>> 4
4
>>> 5
5

A Python literal is the simplest kind of Python expression: it is a piece of code that represents the
exact value as written. For example, 4 is an integer literal representing the number 4.

What about the * symbol? We know from our study of mathematics that * means
multiplication, but what is it, technically, in the Python programming language? A literal,
expression, or something else? Let’s try to evaluate it in the Python console (typing in * and
pressing Enter): 2
2
This example will make much more sense if you’re following along on the Python console on your computer!

>>> *
Traceback (most recent call last):
... lots of text omitted ...
File "<input>", line 1
*
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

This is our very first Python error message, telling us that something went wrong when the
Python interpreter tried to execute our code. In this case, we received a syntax error (which the
interpreter calls SyntaxError ), which means that our code was not properly structured. This
should make sense: just writing * by itself is not a valid multiplication operation, as * expects
both an expression on its left and right sides to multiply.

So * by itself is not a valid Python expression. Instead, * is an example of an operator, which is a


symbol in a programming language that represents a specific computation to perform. In the
Python programming language, operators are not expressions, but are used to build up larger
expressions from smaller ones, just as we use * to write the expression 4 * 5 . As we’ll see later in
this chapter, most operators in Python are binary operators, meaning they are used to combine two
expressions together. Addition ( + ), subtraction ( - ), and multiplication ( * ) are all examples of
binary operators.

In summary, 3 the expression 4 * 5 consists of two smaller expressions, the literals 4 and 5, joined
3 We’re deliberately using all of the terminology we introduced in this section. Pause at each italicized word and make
sure you understand it (or go back up to review its definition).

together with the arithmetic operator * , representing multiplication. We’ll devote the rest of this
chapter to exploring the different kinds of data we can represent in Python beyond just numbers.
We’ll see how to write literals for different data types and what computations we can perform on
them using different operators.

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